. "If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow: and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are.”
Compare to this Buddhist take from the Korean teacher, Jae Woong Kim (1940-)
"In order for a bowl of rice to get to your table, the heavens must have let the sun shine to grow the rice paddy and scattered just enough rain to wet the shoots. The earth must have opened its heart to let the rice spread its roots, and the wind must have blown cool breezes to ripen the crops. The whole process must be teeming with the sweat of the farmer who planted the rice in spring, pulled the weeds in summer, harvested the crops in fall, and with the care of the one who made the warm bowl of rice, soaking it and boiling it.
Not only that but, in order for today's farming and table to exist, there had to be vertical accumulation of technologies from numerous ancestors and traditions. Horizontally there were precious efforts to produce farming tools, fertilizers, threshers, a rice mill, kitchen utensils, fuel and so on. Therefore, how can you call a bowl of rice yours just because you bought it with your money?
Trace its history--in a bowl of rice, there is the grace of the entire human race and the whole universe."
We have this passage on the wall of our kitchen below a picture of H.H. Tenzin Gyatso, 14th in his line.
Beautiful quote. I am going to put that beside my spice rick to.o! OH the bowl of rice. But consider the toaster oven and the lawnmower and the iphone, all part of inter-are. All this stuff, the stuff Pope Francis called filth, all of it mined or manufactured from Earth's bounty, but so hard to see "the grace of the entire human race and the whole universe" in its stainless steel shimmer.
Kathleen, thank you for this meditation on attunement. The attitude toward self that you call out in so many of us brings to mind Milton Mayeroff's "On Caring", wherein he argues that the measure of caring is to help another to grow and to care for yet others. Mayeroff illustrated this idea with many examples, especially a father's relationship with his children, and extended "caring for" to ideas (democracy) and institutions. He did not use the example of our relationship to Mother Earth, however, but well he might have.
Your essay also calls to mind Nancy Fraser's assessment of capitalism, "Cannibal Capitalism", in which she argues that an essential component of capitalism is treat nature, Mother Earth, as a resource, freely available for use for the pursuit of profit, and with absolutely no thought of the need for its repair or replenishment. I do see the hand of capitalism in shaping our view of ourselves inward, isolating us from "interbeing", and making it so difficult to fully comprehend our very interconnectedness with all else, perhaps especially with Mother Earth. There is no more powerful socialization agent in the world as capitalism. Call it, as many do, "consumerism" or "materialism", but I fear that we are all poisoned and sickened by it. The encyclicals of Pope Francis do not mention capitalism, but that is clearly the source of what he sees in our inability to care for our common home. Is "integral ecology" not attunement?
'True' caring is difficult to do, even for those who otherwise present themselves as caring, like the example of Dr. Shaw. I find it challenging to even sense this alienation I have from Mother Earth (and to sense the limitations of my efforts to care for others), even as I consider myself a caring person and "climate activist". So thank you for a meditation that allowed me to see connections that I had missed in writings that matter to me. Cletis
Oh Capitalism! It has us by the throat and while it gives us great bounty it makes it hard to see the real cost of all that bounty. And how do we outrun capitalism's separatist, numbing force in our lives?
We need to avoid the “trigger letter” S and still bring ecosocialism into practice. Maybe keep the focus on ‘public’, or ‘capitalism reform’, or ‘integral ecology’, but capitalism as is won’t get us there. And you can take that to the bank!
Kathleen- Your essay is so thoughtful and beautiful. But sad. To me, you are too hard on yourself, a woman who has lived her life guided by deep integrity and such big- hearted love.
Your reference to Thich Nhat Hanh led me to my old and very loved copy of Touching Peace, my touchstone for decades. From the chapter, “We Have Arrived,”...
“We have to live in a way that liberates the ancestors and future generations who are inside of us. Joy, peace, freedom, and harmony are not individual matters. If we do not liberate our ancestors, we will be in bondage all our lives, and we will transmit that to our children and grandchildren. Now is the time to do it. To liberate them means to liberate ourselves. This is the teaching of interbeing. As long as our ancestors in us are all suffering, we cannot really be happy. If we take one step mindfully, freely, happily touching the Earth, we do it for all previous and future generations. They all arrive with us at the same moment, and all of us find peace at the same time.”
I see a woman whose actions daily liberate her ancestors and herself and her future generations.
Wonderful invitation to attunement, Kathleen! Thank you. I think your critique of Dr. Shah’s analysis is spot on. Leadership and management must begin with us! Modern liberal theologians (of whom I count myself) have moved atonement theology to at-one-ment theology. I think that is very close to attunement! Let’s talk! A walk Monday?🤞
I hope liberal theology hasn't forgotten the hard lessons taught in the South American liberation theology of the seventies! A worthy theology now all but forgotten in the global north.
Union as in at Columbia? If so, small world! My stepfather taught there! My niece was accepted at HDS- she aspired to be a UU minister, but made a sudden swerve to the law profession. I contemplated Berkeley, but went to a monastery instead!
Morris Siegel, but he wasn't there at Columbia when you were, he left there in the late fifties and met my mother and they married at the University of Illinois Champaign Urbana in 1960. He wasn't a teacher at the Union but taught in the Anthropology department! He wasn't particularly religious that I know of but he gave mother a gold star of Israel locket that passed to my sister when mother died and her wedding ring which had that famous quote from the book of Ruth. Sorry the connection wasn't tighter.
A very wise and heartful contemplation. No one could have written it but you, with your fierce love, your interwoven being. Every year it seems like you and perhaps I too are disappearing into earth, sky, forests, waters, history, peoples.. not evaporating or vanishing but a process of gentle absorbtion into some unimaginably wonderful whole- Mother Earth. Becoming slowly part of what we who remain will breathe. The true immortality She holds for us all. Striving or resting it is our good fate- an unearned gift.
Beautifully put as only you could have written! We are getting closer and sometimes it seems the stay here is too encumbered by this consciousness. Ready for the jump!
Kathleen quoted this in her essay:
. "If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow: and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are.”
Compare to this Buddhist take from the Korean teacher, Jae Woong Kim (1940-)
"In order for a bowl of rice to get to your table, the heavens must have let the sun shine to grow the rice paddy and scattered just enough rain to wet the shoots. The earth must have opened its heart to let the rice spread its roots, and the wind must have blown cool breezes to ripen the crops. The whole process must be teeming with the sweat of the farmer who planted the rice in spring, pulled the weeds in summer, harvested the crops in fall, and with the care of the one who made the warm bowl of rice, soaking it and boiling it.
Not only that but, in order for today's farming and table to exist, there had to be vertical accumulation of technologies from numerous ancestors and traditions. Horizontally there were precious efforts to produce farming tools, fertilizers, threshers, a rice mill, kitchen utensils, fuel and so on. Therefore, how can you call a bowl of rice yours just because you bought it with your money?
Trace its history--in a bowl of rice, there is the grace of the entire human race and the whole universe."
We have this passage on the wall of our kitchen below a picture of H.H. Tenzin Gyatso, 14th in his line.
All next to the spice rack. Interbeing.
Beautiful quote. I am going to put that beside my spice rick to.o! OH the bowl of rice. But consider the toaster oven and the lawnmower and the iphone, all part of inter-are. All this stuff, the stuff Pope Francis called filth, all of it mined or manufactured from Earth's bounty, but so hard to see "the grace of the entire human race and the whole universe" in its stainless steel shimmer.
Kathleen, thank you for this meditation on attunement. The attitude toward self that you call out in so many of us brings to mind Milton Mayeroff's "On Caring", wherein he argues that the measure of caring is to help another to grow and to care for yet others. Mayeroff illustrated this idea with many examples, especially a father's relationship with his children, and extended "caring for" to ideas (democracy) and institutions. He did not use the example of our relationship to Mother Earth, however, but well he might have.
Your essay also calls to mind Nancy Fraser's assessment of capitalism, "Cannibal Capitalism", in which she argues that an essential component of capitalism is treat nature, Mother Earth, as a resource, freely available for use for the pursuit of profit, and with absolutely no thought of the need for its repair or replenishment. I do see the hand of capitalism in shaping our view of ourselves inward, isolating us from "interbeing", and making it so difficult to fully comprehend our very interconnectedness with all else, perhaps especially with Mother Earth. There is no more powerful socialization agent in the world as capitalism. Call it, as many do, "consumerism" or "materialism", but I fear that we are all poisoned and sickened by it. The encyclicals of Pope Francis do not mention capitalism, but that is clearly the source of what he sees in our inability to care for our common home. Is "integral ecology" not attunement?
'True' caring is difficult to do, even for those who otherwise present themselves as caring, like the example of Dr. Shaw. I find it challenging to even sense this alienation I have from Mother Earth (and to sense the limitations of my efforts to care for others), even as I consider myself a caring person and "climate activist". So thank you for a meditation that allowed me to see connections that I had missed in writings that matter to me. Cletis
Oh Capitalism! It has us by the throat and while it gives us great bounty it makes it hard to see the real cost of all that bounty. And how do we outrun capitalism's separatist, numbing force in our lives?
We need to avoid the “trigger letter” S and still bring ecosocialism into practice. Maybe keep the focus on ‘public’, or ‘capitalism reform’, or ‘integral ecology’, but capitalism as is won’t get us there. And you can take that to the bank!
Kathleen- Your essay is so thoughtful and beautiful. But sad. To me, you are too hard on yourself, a woman who has lived her life guided by deep integrity and such big- hearted love.
Your reference to Thich Nhat Hanh led me to my old and very loved copy of Touching Peace, my touchstone for decades. From the chapter, “We Have Arrived,”...
“We have to live in a way that liberates the ancestors and future generations who are inside of us. Joy, peace, freedom, and harmony are not individual matters. If we do not liberate our ancestors, we will be in bondage all our lives, and we will transmit that to our children and grandchildren. Now is the time to do it. To liberate them means to liberate ourselves. This is the teaching of interbeing. As long as our ancestors in us are all suffering, we cannot really be happy. If we take one step mindfully, freely, happily touching the Earth, we do it for all previous and future generations. They all arrive with us at the same moment, and all of us find peace at the same time.”
I see a woman whose actions daily liberate her ancestors and herself and her future generations.
In peace,
Laura
Wonderful...
Wonderful invitation to attunement, Kathleen! Thank you. I think your critique of Dr. Shah’s analysis is spot on. Leadership and management must begin with us! Modern liberal theologians (of whom I count myself) have moved atonement theology to at-one-ment theology. I think that is very close to attunement! Let’s talk! A walk Monday?🤞
I hope liberal theology hasn't forgotten the hard lessons taught in the South American liberation theology of the seventies! A worthy theology now all but forgotten in the global north.
I don’t think we have but sadly Paulo Freire is probably not taught in seminaries today the way he was when I was at Union in the 1970s.
Union as in at Columbia? If so, small world! My stepfather taught there! My niece was accepted at HDS- she aspired to be a UU minister, but made a sudden swerve to the law profession. I contemplated Berkeley, but went to a monastery instead!
Yes! 1975-1979. Who was your stepfather, Michael?
Morris Siegel, but he wasn't there at Columbia when you were, he left there in the late fifties and met my mother and they married at the University of Illinois Champaign Urbana in 1960. He wasn't a teacher at the Union but taught in the Anthropology department! He wasn't particularly religious that I know of but he gave mother a gold star of Israel locket that passed to my sister when mother died and her wedding ring which had that famous quote from the book of Ruth. Sorry the connection wasn't tighter.
A very wise and heartful contemplation. No one could have written it but you, with your fierce love, your interwoven being. Every year it seems like you and perhaps I too are disappearing into earth, sky, forests, waters, history, peoples.. not evaporating or vanishing but a process of gentle absorbtion into some unimaginably wonderful whole- Mother Earth. Becoming slowly part of what we who remain will breathe. The true immortality She holds for us all. Striving or resting it is our good fate- an unearned gift.
Beautifully put as only you could have written! We are getting closer and sometimes it seems the stay here is too encumbered by this consciousness. Ready for the jump!
Me too. 🙂
beautiful, thank you <3